Chapter 3 - Shadow Play
The rain turned the forest floor into a sludge of mud and decaying leaves. I moved with a silence that came from years of high-stakes extraction. The heat signature was still moving, but it had slowed down. They were cautious.
I watched from the canopy of a low-hanging oak tree. A man, dressed in dark tactical gear, was creeping toward my porch. He held a suppressed pistol in his hand.
Richard’s muscle.
He wasn't a professional—he moved too heavily, his breathing too ragged. He was an amateur trying to play soldier. I let him get within ten feet of the deck before I moved.
I didn't use the gun. I dropped from the tree, landing behind him like a falling stone. I hooked my arm around his throat and dragged him into the darkness of the thicket before he could even blink. He struggled, reaching for his weapon, but I applied pressure to the nerve cluster in his shoulder, and his arm went dead.
I pinned him to the ground, my face inches from his.
"Who sent you?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the rain.
The man grunted, trying to claw at my face. I pressed my knee into his chest, effectively pinning his lungs. "I'm going to ask you once. If you don't answer, I’m going to make sure you never walk again. Who sent you?"
"Sterling," he gasped, his eyes wide with genuine terror. "He said… he said to get the phone. He said the phone had the proof."
"He thinks he can buy his way out of this with one more crime?" I shook my head, almost feeling pity for the man beneath me. "Tell him the phone is already with the authorities. Tell him the game is over."
I knocked him unconscious with a precise strike and stripped his tactical vest. I found a burner phone in his pocket—an outgoing call to a number I recognized immediately.
Richard’s personal line.
I dialed it. It rang twice.
"Did you get it?" Richard’s voice was frantic, desperate.
"Richard," I said calmly.
The silence on the other end was absolute. He must have realized his world was crumbling.
"Arthur," he said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and terror. "You have no idea what you've done. I'll kill you. I'll burn that house to the ground with you and her in it."
"You're a billionaire, Richard," I said, leaning back against a tree, watching the house through the rain. "Or you were. By the time the sun rises, you'll be a fugitive. And the people I've notified? They don't have laws, Richard. They have lists. You're on one."
"I have money! I have influence!"
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"You have a cell waiting for you," I said, then hung up.
I turned back to the house. I had to secure the perimeter. If he was sending goons, he was panicking. And a panicked man is the most dangerous kind.
